


The Truth About Love

by MistressAkira



Series: FE Rare Pair Week 2k17 [4]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Being In Love For the First Time, Bouncer!Niles, Closeted Character, FE Rarepair Week 2k17, Fluff and Angst, Idiots in Love, Implied Sexual Content, Law student!Tsubaki, Learning How To Be In Love, M/M, Moving In Together, Rare Pairings, Songfic, highly experimental writing, look these boys are bad at love but they're learning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 12:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12036081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistressAkira/pseuds/MistressAkira
Summary: Love is gross. It’s disorganized, sporadic, imperfect.And Tsubaki has never been happier.Written for FE Rarepair Week, day 4: Gross.





	The Truth About Love

**Author's Note:**

> Written for FE Rarepair Week, day 4: Gross.
> 
> The prompts were Flirt, Gross, and Cafeteria. I, like most unoriginal people, was going to go with ‘flirt’ (and already had a whole drabble ready to go) when suddenly I got very, very, VERY attached to Tsubaki/Niles. And then I listened to The Truth About Love by P!nk, and my mission was clear.
> 
> It feels kinda weird writing about two different Tsubaki parings for rarepair week, but closeted bisexual Tsubaki is my new favorite thing, and you will have to pry him from my cold, dead hands. I also just like Tsubaki as a character. He’s a two-faced sassy bitch. I mean, I also hate him because he’s a two-faced sassy bitch, but eh, sticks and stones.
> 
> So here we are, a soliloquy about the truth and love and all its wonderful horrors. It’s a fucking mess.

Love is gross.

It's another person, another body, in your space, eating your food, sleeping in your bed. It's another person's feelings, dreams, lies, and secrets.

It's not black or white, right or wrong, perfect or incomplete. It's everything at once, nothing like you expected and like everything you've ever heard.

The truth about love is that Tsubaki never thought he’d love it.

* * *

 

(Love) It was Niles' seedy downtown apartment, loud and messy, cluttered with dirty clothes, dirty music, and dirty footprints. Down the street from equally seedy bars and clubs, and only sleeping over on weekdays because the noise they bled on the weekends was unbearable.

It was shared late nights not doing what they should have been. _I’ve got class_ and _I don’t give a damn, let’s go do something ill-advised._ Hole-in-the-wall restaurants that Tsubaki would have never known existed if Niles hadn’t taken him. Back allies never tread and chain link fences never jumped if Niles hadn’t goaded him.

It was hating the grit and the mess but also not, because this was Niles’ life and Tsubaki was allowed in it.

It was Tsubaki's eighth-floor high-rise uptown flat, clean and organized and cream colored until Niles came for the weekend and inevitably trashed it.

It was Tsubaki’s late nights going to class and Niles’ late nights working as a bouncer. Going days without seeing each other and hours without texting each other and minutes without thinking of each other, and Tsubaki not missing him.

It was waking up at three am and missing him so profoundly that Tsubaki doesn’t know what to do with himself.

It was seeing the things Niles had carelessly left last weekend strewn everywhere, like he couldn’t be bothered to remember them because he knew he’d be back. Shirts and sunglasses, receipts from places he’d gone without Tsubaki. A parking ticket and inappropriate doodles on napkins. A half-drunk coffee in the fridge. Tsubaki’s most recent test folded into a paper airplane.

It was everywhere he looked, Niles everywhere in Tsubaki’s life. And it normally would have annoyed him, the clutter, the crudeness, the disregard. But he can’t look away and he can’t move it, because its Niles’ and he will be back to claim it, and it’d be more of a pain to fight over him _not_ leaving it.

It was allowing the grit and the mess, because this was Tsubaki’s life and he wanted Niles in it.

* * *

 

Love is filthy.

There is no personal space. The skin-on-skin feeling that's always there, like you’re flush up against them even when they're across the room, the claustrophobic sensation that you're always being touched because they've been inside you. Known you, inside and out, as well as you know yourself. And it's scary because they know what you're thinking.

They know you're thinking about how gross it is. And they delight in it, making you feel that way about them. Making you want to continue feeling that way. So deep in each other you can’t crawl out.

So filthy that you don’t want to.

The truth is that Tsubaki both hated and loved it.

* * *

 

(Love) It was hands, hands everywhere, messed up hair, and multiple showers.

It was morning breath kisses and morning breath arguing. Sheet marks and stained sheets. _Five more minutes_ and _Get in the shower with me, asshole._

It was screwing on the kitchen counter minutes before one of them had to go to work. Weekends spent on the couch doing nothing (not a thing) but running their hands through the other's hair. Some nights doing everything _but_ talking, and other nights doing nothing but.

It was late nights and hungover mornings. Sharing a toothbrush and wearing the same clothes two days in a row because Tsubaki just decided to show up at Niles' apartment without planning further than seeing his surprised smile.

It was waking up tasting like someone else, smelling like someone else, _being_ someone else, because when Tsubaki was around Niles, he became someone else.

It was being the person who went out dancing and drinking, the person who fucked Niles in the neon club restroom. Being the person who cooked on the weekends, did laundry for two, was the designated driver, and covered the tab.

It was being Tsubaki, fully immersed in this feeling.

* * *

 

Love is disgusting.

It gets all over the place, to the point you can’t look somewhere and not see it covering everything.

And sometimes you just can’t look at it anymore.

Love comes and it goes, covers everything with a permanence and gets swept away like it was never there. You can fall both in and out of love in the same day with the same person, wake up the next day just as in or out of love with them. And then you look in the mirror and know that even when you don’t love them, you’re still _in love_ with them.

And you feel disgusting because it shouldn’t be this easy and this hard. You shouldn’t feel this way because it’s not right to both love and not love someone at the same time, but it’s also not wrong, and it’s confusing. It’s so confusing.

You’re confused and disgusted with yourself, but you wouldn’t trade this feeling for anything.

The truth is that Tsubaki has never been happier, feeling this way.

* * *

 

(Love) It was blood and guts.

It was literal blood and guts. Split knuckles from punching walls, split lips from bites. Hair yanked out and nails dug in. Vomit on the floor from nights out at bars and clubs when they flirt with people not Niles or Tsubaki, and the other drinks to cover their jealousy. Snot on tissues and sweat on sheets when Tsubaki works himself so hard through midterms he gets the flu.

It was metaphorical blood and guts. The blood of the other’s dreams on their hands, hating each other’s guts, being tongue tied and at a loss for words and taking each other’s breath.

It was scars. Both the physical and the emotional. The things said. The things done. Nicks from Niles’ pocket knife the one time he tried to teach Tsubaki how to use it. Tsubaki’s inability to say everything he means if it’s not cruel. All the scars Niles shared with him, and the one he refused to.

It was _I can’t trust you_ and _You never tell the truth_ and _You never tell the whole truth_ and _So you want the truth?_

It was having a fight and Tsubaki kicking him out; Niles getting fucked up, and landing in jail. Tsubaki waking up at 3 am on a Tuesday because he was Niles’ one phone call. Being furiously angry, hanging up, and going back to bed. Being up at six and storming the police station under the guise of solidarity but feeling nothing but regret and panic.

It was _When you’re a lawyer, will you still bail me out of jail?_ and a sincerely frustrated, sincerely terrified, sincerely relieved _I can’t believe you even asked me that._ Because, of course, the answer is _Of fucking course I would._ Because…

It was forgiveness, most of all. Forgiving mistakes, forgiving things said, things done. Forgiving Niles for being Niles and most of all, forgiving himself for still wanting to feel this way about him.

* * *

 

Love is total.

It is gross, disgusting, filthy.

But it is also all consuming.

After all, ‘gross’ can mean more than just repulsion.

It can mean whole. It can mean combined.

It can mean the total of everything you’ve ever wanted, the sum of its parts, the entire picture- revealed at last.

It can mean Niles. It can mean Niles and Tsubaki.

The truth is that it means everything.

* * *

 

(Love) It was not knowing what to do, because Tsubaki’s never felt this way before.

It was Niles making him feel this way.

It was remembering everyone that came before him. The girls Tsubaki's parents liked. The girls they didn't. The boys Tsubaki never brought home because he wasn't perfect and no one could ever know.

It was remembering the way this started. A loud, neon club and a one-night stand that they both grew too attached to. Tsubaki making the mistake of a lifetime and Niles being the best/worst thing to ever happen to him.

It was love making them stupid. Blatantly staring down Niles exes and killing them with kindness, reminding them of what they’d lost and what he’d found. Niles meeting Tsubaki’s parents, coming out, and things better left unsaid (also Niles pleasantly flipping them off to their faces).

It was love making them kind. Drives to and from work for no reason at all other than to see each other. Take-out at midnight after Tsubaki gets home from his late class. Emoticon hearts, pictures of inappropriate things, animal shelter documentaries, and _Niles, my apartment doesn't allow dogs_.

It was _Let's get a new apartment then_. _Move in with me, Tsubaki_.

It was _Do I have to say yes_ and _You haven’t said no._

* * *

 

Love is…

* * *

 

Love is a second-floor mid-range apartment in midtown, comprised of an odd combination of cream and black furniture, clean spaces and cluttered corners, Niles’ filthy music and Tsubaki’s decorative plants. It allowed pets, allowed _for_ an easy ten-minute commute to Tsubaki’s university, and was _allowing_ of messes to happen and mistakes to be made.

It is appointment memos and angry text messages, passive aggressive voicemails and Post-Its reminding Tsubaki that he had a great ass. Niles getting his GED and Tsubaki on the academic fast track to graduate with honors.

It is happiness. Pain. Rage. Hate. Awe. Disgust. Elation.

It is everything at once, nothing like you’ve expected and like everything you've ever heard.

It is how Tsubaki feels every day. Loving every minute of it. And that’s the truth about love.


End file.
